Some say it thundered

On 25 July, 1977 in Lawndale, Logan County, Illinois, 10-year old Marlon Lowe was attacked by a gigantic raptor with a 3-meter wing span that lifted him 60 cm off the ground and carried him for 12 meters. The boy was eventually saved by his mother. Indeed, his experience has become the classical Thunderbird encounter. It was a close one!

There is only one problem: according to modern science, Thunderbirds aren't supposed to exist. The creature is considered to be purely mythological.

Mark A. Hall is a cryptozoologist who believes that Thunderbirds are real, flesh-and-blood creatures. His book contain a lot of reports, both old and new, about birds carrying off people or livestock. Several modern reports come from Alaska, where birds with the even more dramatic wingspan of 4 meters have been reported.

The problem is that Thunderbirds are a world-wide phenomenon. The author mentions legends from Siberia, Russia proper, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, New Zealand, Fiji... More recently, Thunderbirds have been sighted in Iran, southern and eastern Africa, England and even Norway. If these outsized raptors are so universally well-known and have an almost global range, how come we don't see them more often? Why haven't any bird-watcher spotted them? What do they eat? Why don't they swoop down on carrion on a regular basis, scaring away all the vultures and crows in the process?

As usual in cases like this, there are only two possible answers. One is that they don't exist. They really are mythological creatures. The other is that we are dealing with some kind of paranormal phenomenon. We have a bunch of Unidentified Flapping Objects on our hands! The least likely possibility is that we are dealing with an exceedingly rare, flesh-and-blood bird who just happens to be substantially larger than a condor or sea eagle... (And who has survived all over the world, despite being rare.)

Hall also promotes the idea that an unknown, monstrous owl lives in the forests of eastern United States. He calls it Bighoot and believes that it may be responsible for the Mothman observations. Apparently, Bighoot is a master of disguises, and resembles a very large tree trunk when it sits on the ground!

OK, I suppose anything is possible in the state of West Virginia, but there are obvious pitfalls in explaining one unknown with another! Bighoot?

I decided to award Hall's book three stars, since this seems to be one of the few books available on the subject of Thunderbirds. However, "Thunderbirds" is so badly edited, that two stars would have been a more logical option. It may not be a book for the birds, but perhaps another writer should try his hand on this subject?

So what happened in Lawndale that summer day back in 1977? The truth is that we don't know, and probably never will, unless a Thunderbird is sighted by a group of respected ornithologists. Perhaps we don't *want* to know? We do know that Marlon Lowe still stands by his story. He is interviewed on the episode "Birdzilla" of the TV series "MonsterQuest". With that, we must unfortunately close the case for now and await further developments...